Académie française

Timeline

1. 1629–1634House of Valentin Conrart, Paris · ParisFrom around 1629, several men of letters met weekly at the home of the royal secretary Conrart to discuss rhetoric and literary works. Richelieu, informed of this by his secretary Boileau-Despréaux, required that the group be placed under his protection, expanded its membership, and drew up statutes, transforming a private salon into an official project serving the glory of the crown and the purity of the French language.
2. 1635–1637Paris, Kingdom of France · ParisOn January 29, 1635, Louis XIII confirmed the Académie's mission by charter: to preserve and perfect the French language, making it equal to the highest eloquence. The Parlement of Paris, fearing that royal power would use the academy to interfere in justice and public opinion, delayed two years before registering the charter; the Académie thereby obtained full legal status, with a fixed membership of forty seats.
3. 1638–1694Paris, Kingdom of France · ParisBuilding on usage discussions by members such as Claude Favre de Vaugelas, the Académie spent decades compiling normative dictionaries and grammars. The first dictionary edition appeared in 1694, marking French's shift from diverse written practices to a royally sanctioned standard written language, mutually reinforcing 17th-century classical literature.
4. 1793Institut de France, Paris · ParisIn 1793 the revolutionary regime dissolved the royal academies; after the Institut de France was founded in 1795, the Académie's functions were divided. After the Bourbon Restoration in 1816 the Académie resumed its forty-member structure, and since then has continued revising the dictionary, awarding literary prizes, and issuing opinions on new words, becoming a symbolic institution of French language and culture.